On the 11th of September, the Daystar Secondary School held a faculty meeting to discuss self-directed learning and the development and arrangement of a fresh set of Professional Learning Communities, and other learning opportunities, at the school.

We started with a short presentation on PLCs, including a set of agreements focused on collaboration and trust that were adopted by the group. We agreed:

• ...that PLCs are voluntary professional development opportunities for those willing to participate
• ...that PLCs are inclusive: anyone from any department or division is welcome to participate in any PLC of interest.
• ...to adopt the 7 Norms of Collaboration developed by the Center for Adaptive Schools
• ...that "What's said in the PLC, stays in the PLC." I.e., while in a PLC teachers should feel they can be open about their frustrations as well as their epiphanies

The faculty then, knowing how quickly the year flies by, got down the business of identifying their key concerns in the form of topics to be adopted by the PLCs, and some early TTTs & Pop-Up course ideas. These include:

1. PLC: Summative Assessment -- Faciltator TBD
2. PLC: Modern Learning Instuctional Philosophy -- Facilitator: Bill Tolley
3. PLC: Classroom Management -- Facilitator TBD
4. TTT: Informational text "sign posts" to deepen analysis -- Facilitator: Nick Grasso
5. TTT: Co-teaching and team teaching -- Facilitators: Anna Zhu & Adam Velasco
6. Pop-Up: Wakelet to support information literacy -- Facilitator: TBD
7. Pop-Up: Memrise for the Social Studies -- Facilitator: Bill (already held)
8. Pop-Up: OPCVL Analysis in English and Chinese Individuals and Societies -- Facilitator: Bill (already held)

If anyone in the Daystar community wants to learn more about PLCs and how they help teachers help students, please contact the Secondary School's Instructional Coach, Bill Tolley. And if you are interested in the subject matter of a particular PLC, Pop-up or TTT, feel free to contact the facilitator in charge.

Further reading on self-directed professional development and PLCs

• Looking Within: Teachers Leading Their Own Learning, ASCD Education Update, Laura Varlas
• Personalized Professional Development,Edutopia, Adrienne Paul
• Professional Learning Opportunities and the Teachers they Create,Edutopia, Andrew Marcinek
• Teachers taking control: a new vision for professional development, The Guardian, James Kempton
• Should teachers choose their own PD? Education Drive, Linda Jacobson
• The PLC Start-up, Lessons from the trenches, ASCD Express, Bill Tolley
• Why professional development should be more like MasterChef, EdWeek, Bill Tolley
• Professional development based on reality TV, Edutopia, Holland and Wilhelmus